News and Updates

2016/04/26 - Hard drive failure outage

We regret having to inform our users that a hard drive from the server where DHIS is hosted started having problems today and corrupted the DHIS database beyond recovery. As a consequence we had no choice but to restore from an old backup which sadly was from March 2016.

If you created or updated any hosts in the last month or if you registered for an account, there is a good chance that these are no longer there. This being the case, we kindly ask you to re-create them or re-register.

We're really sorry for this, please don't hesitate to contact us at suppport (at) dhis.org if you have any problems restoring your previous hosts.

Our apologies for the inconvenience and the downtime today, things should be back to normal now, yours, the DHIS Team

2013/10/16 - New Update Server IP Address

Every so often we need to move to improve things. After a very long time in
the old server it is now time for an upgrade.

As before, if you connect to the server using the fully qualified domain name is.dhis.org you probably don't need to change anything except perhaps adjusting any firewall rules or port redirects you may have and restarting your client.

If however you update referring to the DHIS server by IP address, please
update it now.

The old IPv4 address was 70.38.33.253 and is now 91.227.223.214.

The old IPv6 address was 2001:470:1d:13b::253 and is now
2a00:1c10:5:201::214

Please update your configuration files accordingly. The old update server
will be kept running for a few days until deactivated. In parallel, the
new server is now running and fully functional.

In the end don't forget to restart your client or force an update to make sure that your ip address is marked online.

2011/07/05 - On virtual trolls and a new mandatory donation requirement

Enough is enough. Even though most of our users are genuine and honest people,
every so often we are faced with vermin morons that can't see anything good
without abusing and destroying it, ending up ruining things for others too.

We've been providing dynamic DNS since 1998, most of it for free. We asked
only a few very basic things, a real person, a real email address, and one
account per person.

Not so long ago some idiots abused the system and made hundreds of registrations
so we were forced to impose a 3 hosts per user limit.

Unfortunately this didn't seem to be enough as invariably we keep being
bombarded by robot scripts who attempt in different ways to create hundreds of
accounts per day,
with fake addresses and names, who knows what for, but surely not for the good
of mankind.

So enough is enough. Free DHIS accounts cease to exist today. For the time being,
after registering for a new account users will be required to make a donation to
the project of at least $5.00 USD via Paypal. This money will be channelised to
the resources required to run the service (server hosting, etc). Each account will allow
a user to create up to 3 DHIS hostnames and not more.

We'll be going through existing registrations and delete any records that we find
with fake information without notice.

Existing users do not need to make a donation and their hosts will continue operational, although they're welcome to if they enjoy the service.

Users should bear in mind that although they make a donation,
the service is still provided without any warranty of
any kind, that they may not use DHIS names for any illegal or destructive activity,
that we reserve the right to close accounts on sight without justification and
that we may decide to change our policies anytime we like.
Finally, if we keep observing abuse we may end-up deciding to close down the service completely.

These are our terms; sorry to those honest people who'll genuinelly be impacted by these measures.
If you don't like it you're very welcome to use another dynamic DNS service provider.

2010/10/21 - New DHIS server with new IP address

DHIS moved to a new, more performing server, and with this its server IP address
changed.

If you connect to the server using the fully qualified domain name is.dhis
.org you probably don't need to change anything except perhaps adjusting
any firewall rules or port redirects you may have and restarting your client.

If however you refer to the server by its IP address 67.205.101.105,
you will ned to change this to the new IP address 70.38.33.253

In the end don't forget to restart your client or force an update to make
sure that your ip address is marked online.

2009/09/04 - Mailing Lists Discontinued

Due to their low usage and much burden on the server in terms of configuration, we've decided to discontinue the mailing lists service. If you had any subscriptions
these have now been automatically removed.

You will continue to receive service announcements if and only if you have a DHIS Web account and if you have Email Notifies enabled. You can
change this flag on your user preferences after loging in; if you don't select Email Notifies you will not receive any emails from us.

2009/09/04 - Server Problems

We had some problems earlier today with the DHIS server and the service was unavailable for a short period of time. These problems should now
have been solved and things should be back online. We apologise for the inconvenience.

2009/09/02 - DHIS Upgrade Completed

This is just a quick update to announce that the server upgrade was successfully completed and that all systems are
back online.

2009/09/01 - DHIS Server Maintenance - 2009.09.02 00:00-23:59 UTC

We would like to inform you that tomorrow, the 2nd of September 2009, the DHIS server will undergo maintenance as
we will be upgrading its operating system. Although we don't expect more than a few minutes of service disrruption,
please be advised that the DHIS services may be unavailable for a a period of time throughout the day which, in the
worse case, could be up to a few hours.

We apologise for the inconvenience and ask for your understanding.

Your DHIS support team.

2009/03/17 - DHIS Server 5.5 reaches end of life

We would like to announce that the DHIS Server source code has reached end-of-life and will no longer be
distributed, promoted or supported as of today. We are now running new server software which has too many specific
service associated bits and twists to be suitable for distribution. We also believe that it is relatively easy to
create a DHIS server based on web updates with some shell scripts + apache so we will not be developing or
distributing new server code.

We will be gradually migrating to Web Updates and deprecate the old DHIS protocol and updating mechanisms.
A new dhid 6.0 based on web updates is on its way. The server however will continue to support all known
DHIS protocols since release 3 so you will still be able to maintain your current DHIS client and update your hosts,
i.e. no action will be required from your part in the short term.

2009/03/02 - Updating with a different IP address

On most cases users want to update their Internet/WAN/Outside IP address; DHIS takes care of this automatically by
retrieving the IP address from which the update requests reaches our servers and using it as the IP address to be
used in the dynamic DNS name.

In some cases however, users may wish to make their DHIS hostnames point to IP addressesother than the one from where
they are submitting the updates. In order to cover this we have introduced the IPAddr form parameter.
Just update with IPAddr=something and your DHIS hostname will point to it, whether it is an IPv4 or IPv6 address.

2009/03/02 - IPv6 support added to DHIS

We are pleased to announce that DHIS is now fully IPv6 enabled; not only you can connect to this web site,
make DNS queries and send us emails using IPv6, but you can now also update your dhis.org host name's IPv6 AAAA
record; using web updates it is as simple as updating any IPv4 A record; just update from an IPv6 address and
that's it! You can read more about it
here.

We may now well be one of the, if not the, first dynamic DNS service in the world to support IPv6 dynamic DNS!

2009/02/07 - At long last, Web Updates

You might have wondered why we haven't done this before; well, the reasons were because we hadn't had time or perhaps
were just
too lazy. Also when we started 10 years ago, internet connections were as slow as 28Kbps and servers not as performing as
they are today so a UDP based approach seamed reasonable at the time.

At long last
DHIS Web Updates are here which means that you no longer need
a special DHIS client to update your DHIS hosts; you can do it with many DDNS standard clients out there and you can
do it from many hardware based xDSL and Cable routers that support DDNS. You can even do it from this web site!

2009/01/25

Hello and Happy new year! Just a quick update to announce that the web control
panel has been changed a little in format.
Please let us know if you encounter any problems.

2008/12/01 - Old servers deactivated

As planned, the old servers have been deactivated today. If you were still
using any of them PLEASE USE THE NEW SERVER is.dhis.org @ 67.205.101.105
. The problem previously reported is also no longer applicable; just configure the new server and your host should become online without delay.

2008/11/20 - Problems with moving to the new server

We were just made aware of an unexpected problem that you might be experiencing when changing the DHIS server to the new IP address due to a
race condition; it goes like this:

You change the IP address of the server and register on the new server without bringing or waiting for the old server to detect that you
are offline; as a result you will register and be marked online in the new server, no problems so far ... but after 3-5 minutes the old server
doesn't hear from you and marks you offline again and since the new server is still hearing from you it won't be aware of this and will not remark you online.

Sorry, this is a current server software limitation to due with synchronisation. In order to make it work please proceed as follows:

Kill your DHIS client, *WAIT* for 5 minutes until your host is offline, then configure the new server and restart it.

In other words, just wait long enough for your host to be marked offline before marking it online at the new server.

Sorry for the inconvenience, we should have thought and mentioned this before. This won't happen anymore once the old servers are disconnected.

The DHIS Support Team
2008/11/18

Important Announcement : At the end of the present month we will be decomissioning the DHIS servers with IP addresses 82.103.140.215 and 67.205.101.106.

The primary DHIS update server will become is.dhis.org available at the IP address 67.205.101.105. The other two servers will be deactivated on the 1st of December 2008.

Please double-check your DHIS client configuration file and proceed accordingly in order to avoid being offline:

If you are using name-based server identification and your DHIS server is is.dhis.org you DO NOT need to change anything.

If your DHIS server address is 67.205.101.105 you also don't need to change anything.

Only if your DHIS server address is 82.103.140.215 or 67.205.101.106 must you replace it by 67.205.101.105
in your client configuration and restart it.

You may perform any changes at once since all servers are currently operational.

Thank you for your understanding, The DHIS Support Team.

2008/11/18

Due to a verified general lack of adherence to our commercial products and the fact that there are already too many hosting providers
in the market specialising in similar services, we have decided to suspend our paid products line for now.

Also due to this, DHIS is
reverting back to its original form whereby it is run as an indendent project by its developers and operators privately,
and although still sponsored by, ceases to have any direct connection with the company IP Objects.

We are therefore back to the stage of one single
product: FREE hostnames under the dhis.org domain until further notice. Enjoy :)

The planned upgrade was successfull and the DHIS Update Server is1.dhis.org at
82.103.140.215 is once again operational.

2008/08/21

Maintenance Window Announcement : We will be upgrading one of our servers, tomorrow the 22nd of August, at 9:30am
Central European Time; during this time the DHIS Update Server is1.dhis.org at 82.103.140.215 will become unavailable
for 1-2 hours. DHIS Users may avoid any downtime by swapping to the second server is2.dhis.org at 67.205.101.105 or
simply by using the DNS name is.dhis.org. All other services will remain unaffected.

Thank you for your understanding, The DHIS Support Team.

2008/08/21

New products are now available for subscription, including DHIS under your own domain, web / email hosting and virtual private servers.

2008/08/21

The Web Control Panel application has been completely rewritten; instead of having individual web accounts for each DHIS host, a single
account can now control multiple hosts. If you had more than one DHIS host you will find all your hosts by logging in with your
Email Address and the Web Administration Password of your first or only DHIS host.

Since the software is brand new,
if you have or encounter any problems please let us know as soon as possible so that we can correct them straight away.

2008/08/13

As you may have noticed, we are changing things a *bit* :) We will announce all changes properly
once everything is completed. In the meantime if you experience any problems please don't hesitate
to contact us.

2008/05/22

A small correction in the source code of client and server originated a new 5.5 version;
In this version the server no longer needs the client to send a return port of 0 thus
making the client compatible with older versions of the server too.

This is a minor release update;
please stay tuned as more updates are likely to be made available soon.

2008/05/03

The DHIS server 5.4 is now available for download
here.
The server has suffered many changes and is totally different from its
predecessor; namely, from WHATSNEW:

The modular architecture has been dropped and the modules and
engines are no longer part of dhisd. Instead dhisd is again
a DNS only updating daemon without engines; the extra functionality
provided by previous engines can however still be replicated with
OnCmd and OffCmd scripts on a per-host basis.

The default configuration directory is now /usr/local/etc

The default binaries directory is now /usr/local/sbin

It is now possible to put all configuration parameters under a
config file; the default is /usr/local/etc/dhisd.conf

The pid file default location moved to /var/run/dhis/dhisd.pid

The log file default location moved to /var/log/dhis/dhisd.log

The server can now be bound to a specific IP address with either
the BindAddr config option or the -b command line option.

Multiple options have been added and are now possible with the
command line (dhisd -h) and the config file.

The server now binds to a UDP port (58800 by default) and sends
UDP messages from that port; in previous versions dhisd sent
UDP messages from a random port even though it listened on port 58000.

In addition to the database text file (specified by the -d option
or the DBFile config option), dhisd can now use a MySQL database
instead to achieve the same purpose of the dhis.db file. See
README and INSTALL for details.

This version of the server is compatible with NAT friendly 5.4 clients.

2008/04/22

Small bug correction in the DHIS client. The new client is available
here.

2008/04/21

Due to a major power supply failure the DHIS services have been unavailable
yesterday and part of today. We apologise for the inconvenience this may have
caused to our users; we made everything in our power to restore the services,
but the company that hosts the server was only able to replace the faulty power
supply today. All services have now been restored and are operational again.

2008/04/18

This web site has been redesigned and the management tools have new implementations. Please let us know if you
encounter any bugs or problems when browsing through dhis.org.

A new DHIS client version 5.4 is available
for download as
dhid-5.4.
The new version
introduces a new protocol that is NAT friendly and no longer requires port redirects to be configured
in NAT boxes. DHIS 5.4 clients can now run behind Wireless LAN / ADSL routers or any other devices
performing NAT seamlessly. In addition communication now only occurs between ports 58800 of both clients
and server, making it easier for firewalls to be configured for DHIS. Please report any bugs that you may find.

2008/01/16

As previously announced, the old DHIS server at 81.92.220.129 has been
deactivated. Please use the new DHIS server @ 82.103.140.215.

2008/01/05

The DHIS server and DHIS DNS Engine were upgraded to version 5.3, correcting
a parsing bug that would interpret commented lines instead.

2007/12/15

Note: We just sent the announcements below in an email message
(or accidentaly two ;) to registered email accounts. You should have
received this information by email. If not, please double-check your email
address.

Well, after a long time without news, DHIS comes back to live and
things start to move again .... today we are announcing two major changes in
our service.

The first concerns a change in the server's IP address. We apologise for
having to ask you once again to change your DHIS server IP address in your
dhid.conf or equivalent file.
Please replace the DHIS server 81.92.220.129 by
82.103.140.215 and restart your DHIS client.

If you are using a named based DHIS server such as is.dhis.org with a recent
version of dhid you may not need to change anything.
The old IP address will remain operational until
January 2007, time after which we will deactivate it and updates
will only be accepted via the new one.

The second announcement concerns subscription payments.
Over the past two years we have been running a subscription model whereby
if you wanted to have a DHIS dynamic host you would need to make a payment.
The model allowed us to pay for the server (just) in the first year, but on
the second year payments shown to be less than what we spent on the server.
This was already expected since we haven't been promoting DHIS that much, and
the code itself hasn't seen inovation in recent years.

So adding the fact that subscription payments per se aren't enough
to support DHIS and the fact that we are expanding ourselves in other areas and
getting new sponsorships,
we have decided to cancel the compulsory subscription payments and make DHIS
FREE once again.

We have therefore removed the expiry date concept from all active DHIS records.

We would like to take this opportunity to say a BIG THANK YOU to all the
people who have made payments in these past two years, and without whom DHIS
would not have survived.

And finally, a MERRY HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

2007/12/15

After rethinking our policy, we decided to remove the SPF records from dynamic
host records as previously announced. We regret this measure but we think it
is necessary to avoid or at least make it more difficult for spammers to
use DHIS as a source domain. Most legitim email senders should have their ISP
mail servers anyway and consequently, not need an SPF record for their dynamic
IP.

2007/12/03

We regret having to announce that due to a major server outage,
DHIS was unavailable for a considerable period of time throughout the day.
More specifically, the server ceased to reboot and we had to wait for a manual
reset of its system which was performed by the datcentre support later today.
The service is now resumed and is back to normal. Our apologies for the
inconvenience.

2007/11/14

An unexpectd filesystem full condition in our server together with some
emergency maintenance
performed in our hosting provider's network this afternoon may have caused
temporary DHIS service disruption today; we apologise for the inconvenience.
All issues should have been solved now and the service should be back to
normal.

2007/09/30

We have given a new look to the DHIS web site and hope you enjoy it. If you notice any problems please let us know via the support mailbox.

2007/09/23

We have added SPF records (www.openspf.org) to all the dynamic hosts in order to make it easier for dynamic hosts to be able to send emails.

In addition to the standard A record, dynamic hosts now also have something like: "TXT v=spf1 a ip4:A.A.A.A ~all" where A.A.A.A is the host's dynamic address, thus allowing it to send emails.

Thanks Gus!

2006/04/06

As previously announced, all DHIS dynamic records had been set with an
expiry date of 6th of April 2006 due to the new subscription model. Today
all the records for which a payment was not received have been locked
by the system. We apologise for the inconvenience but as we mentioned
before we can no longer support a free based dynamic DNS service.

Should your record have been locked and should you wish to reactivate it,
you may still do so by submitting a payment. Otherwise no action is
required from your part and the record will eventually be deleted.

Many thanks for your support!

2006/03/09

We have realised that there are some DHIS users who have email addresses on the
database which
are no longer valid. Consequently these users are or have been unable to
retrieve an
administration password and see / manage their accounts. If this is the case
with your record, please email us your dhid.conf file and we will
update your host with your current email address so that you can login.

2006/03/08

The net.dhis.org CNAME records for all hosts have been deleted from DNS as
previously announced. From today onwards, only the machine.dhis.org forms
are available under DHIS.

2006/03/04 - A Lot of news!!!!!!!

New Web Site

We have just released the new version and layout of our web site at www.dhis.org.
We hadn't changed the visual look of DHIS for a long time and hope you enjoy the
newly designed site. If you have any problems please let us know using our
support mailbox.

DHIS is still running and in good shape. Even though we don't have as many
users as other dynamic DNS providers, DHIS has been running steadily now
for 8 years!, non-stop, and we're glad to have been online for this long.

Manage My Account Tool

A new web interface was developed and is available at www.dhis.org
for users to manage their accounts. In order to login you will need
an administration password which, for first time users, can be
retrieved by email. The Manage my Account tool allows you to
see your record status, expiration date, payments, to change your
authentication keys, client or contact information, and to generate
reports on availability and logging information at the server for your
host.

Terms of Use

A service level agreement was put in place just to make everyone
aware of where the DHIS responsibilities start and terminate. Please
read it on our web site at www.dhis.org - > Terms of Use.
By submitting a payment and subscribing to the DHIS dynamic DNS
service you agree that you have read and abide by the defined terms
of use.

Domain net.dhis.org to be deactivated in the following days

We would like to announce that the domain name net.dhis.org will be
discontinued in the few days. All records in the form
xxx.net.dhis.org have been migrated to xxx.dhis.org and a CNAME record was
added, making xxx.net.dhis.org an alias of xxx.dhis.org.

In the coming days we will deactivate net.dhis.org completely. Therefore,
please make sure that you don't have any applications or systems that
depend on net.dhis.org. If you have, please change them now. If you can't
please let us know in advance so that we can provision your hostname to
remain with an alias for net.dhis.org

Also, please make sure that your /etc/dhid.conf doesn't refer to an
ISAddr of ns.net.dhis.org. If it does, please change it to is.dhis.org

New Subscription Model

We are sorry to announce that the DHIS dynamic DNS service will no longer
be provided for free. We have been running it for 8 years now, and spent a
lot of time with it. Due to its free nature, DHIS just kept running per-se
on a remote server without many improvements or changes. It is now time
to abandon this model and concentrate on something better that pays for itself.

For this we have rented a new server and can now provide higher availability
and improved latency and speed. This server naturally has yearly recurring
hiring costs which need to be payed. We also realised that after 8 years, it
didn't make much sense to continue to provide free technical support for
the system since this takes some of our time.

We are therefore introducing the subscription based model, aiming at a better
service.

Expiry date, locked records and Payment System

Due to the new subscription based model, DHIS records have now two additional
fields in the server database; a status field defining if the record is active
or locked, and a expiry date field, stating when the subscription expires.

A daily check is done on the database for records that will
expire in the next 15 days. When found, an automated email is sent to
the owners of the records with a reminder about the expiry date.

Another daily check is done on the database for records that have
expired. When found, the dynamic hosts are set to the locked state,
marked offline and are unable to authenticate successfully. A second
automated email is sent to the owners with a notification of this change.

Records that are locked cannot become online. To avoid fast re-registrations
we will keep the dynamic hosts in the database for an undefined period of
time until we eventually delete them.

The expiry date can be extended by a period of 12 months at any time
simply by submitting a payment of 12 EUROS (1 euro per month). For more
information on this please read the Payments section of our web site
at www.dhis.org

Payments have to be manually verified so please allow some time for
confirmation and credit of days to your record. If a payment is
received before a record expires, the expiry date will be automatically
credited with 365 days adding to the remaining days. If a payment
is received after the record has expired, but which is still in the
database in locked state, credit will be added from the date
of acceptance of payment.

Current Users and Payments

The existing DHIS records have been set with an expiry date of
6th of April, 2006. This effectively means that you will not be
able to use your DHIS client to update your hostname after the
6th of April unless you submit a payment by then. If you
currently use the DHIS dynamic DNS service and wish to continue using it
you need to subscribe by the 6th of April in order to continue using the
service beyond this point in time.

Lifetime Membership Users

As mentioned in the past, users that made a donation or contribution
to the DHIS project got lifetime free membership (for as long as DHIS
remains alive). Consequently we have set the expiry date of all users
who in the past made a donation or contribution to NEVER. These records/users
do not need to submit a payment. If you made a donation /
contribution in the past but accidently your record(s) is set with an expiry date,
please let us know as soon as possible so that we can correct it. Users who have made
a donation can have as many records as they like. Also, users who have made a donation
but no longer have a dhis hostname (due to it not having been used and having expired)
can claim their lifetime membership status for new records.

2006/02/17

We had problems and downtime in our DHIS server in Japan which forced us to
move to our new server before expected. If you are unable to become online,
please check and update your IS server address. The old address 61.194.78.30
is no longer accepting updates. The new DHIS server address is
81.92.220.129. For hostname based server authentication (dhid release
5 or above) you may also use the fully qualified domain name
is.dhis.org as the DHIS server.

2005/11/20

We have enabled IPv6 on the DHIS server so if you have an IPv6 connection
you'll be able to reach this site using the next generation IP protocol.
Likewise, our email boxes are now IPv6 enabled.

2005/11/09

We're now accepting registrations under dhis.org instead of net.dhis.org.
The old xxx.net.dhis.org A records were converted to xxx.dhis.org, and new
CNAME records were created for the form xxx.net.dhis.org.
In the future we will remove the net.dhis.org CNAME records completely so
please use the xxx.dhis.org form of your host to reference it.

2005/11/03

Due to the large amounts of SPAM we were receiving in our support
mailboxes, the addresses info@dhis.org and dhis@dhis.org have been
deactivated. Please use our new support (at) dhis.org account
should you wish or need to contact us.

2005/10/28

Minor documentation changes were made to the DHIS client. The new release 5.3
is available here.

2005/10/18

We have been doing some cleaning. Dynamic hosts that haven't been
used (logged in) during the past 3 months have been deleted.